


Issue 3: Rite of Passage

by Vinnocent



Series: Junior League vol. 1: Titans West [3]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, Blue Beetle (Comics), DC Animated Universe, DCU, DCU (Comics), Green Lantern - All Media Types, Superman - All Media Types, Teen Titans - All Media Types
Genre: Alcohol, Asexual Character, Bar Room Brawl, Birthday, Blood and Gore, Bonding, Coitus Interruptus, Drunken Shenanigans, Embarrassment, F/M, Family Issues, Gen, Green Lantern Milagro, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, Next-Gen, Police, Secret Relationship, Self-Sacrifice, Sexual Content, Trans Character, Undressing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-21
Updated: 2017-11-03
Packaged: 2019-01-20 11:56:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 14,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12432321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vinnocent/pseuds/Vinnocent
Summary: When Milagro learns it's Lian's twenty-first birthday, she takes her out drinking. This was a mistake.





	1. Chapter 1

In Colin Wilke’s humble opinion, Milagro Reyes might just be the best kisser ever. True, he might be a little biased by the fact that she is the one he’s currently kissing, but the way she clings to him desperately, the way she melts into his touch, the way her fingers knead at his neck and scalp, the way she’s barely caught her breath before she’s trying to lose it again…

Colin’s phone is buzzing in his back pocket. Again. With a low growl in the back of his throat, he pulls it out of his jeans and turns away from her wonderful lips just long enough to shut the phone off. When he turns back to her, she’s grinning. “Mine now?” she asks breathlessly.

Colin nods. He’s grinning, too. “Yes. Absolutely. Definitely.”

And then they’re kissing again. Her right hand moves down to his shoulder. Then it’s pulling at his shirt. His fingertips graze her waistband.

An announcement comes on over the intercom. “Wilkes, report,” says Damian Wayne’s voice.

Colin pulls himself off the bed, spitting a slew of words that a good Catholic boy shouldn’t even know. Then again, a good Catholic boy wouldn’t beat the shit out of bad men on a regular basis, nor would he be presently trying to undress his girlfriend on his bed. He stalks over to the wall by the door where his own intercom panel is, presses the button, and demands, “Are you violently hemorrhaging with only minutes to live?”

“No?” says Damian.

“Then it can wait.”

“But I need to go over－”

“I will let you know when I’m available.”

“What could you possibly be doing?”

Colin deigns not to answer that. He returns to his bed and collapses next to Milagro, who is already reaching under her shirt to fasten her bra again. “Sorry about that,” he grumbles.

For several minutes, Milagro doesn’t say anything. She pulls her hair back up into its frequent ponytail and then finds her green jacket kicked into a corner of Colin’s room. He doesn’t say anything about this, since it rather obviously communicates that the mood has been ruined. She’ll either decide to go back to work and see him later, or she’ll sit with him again, and they’ll simply hang out and enjoy each other’s company until Damian becomes too insistent. It’s an annoyingly familiar pattern.

So he’s surprised when, after pulling on her jacket, she kind of just stands there, looking into the middle space. “Milagro?” he asks.

She kneads at her shoulder but still doesn’t look at him. “Maybe…” she mumbles. “Maybe we shouldn’t… shouldn’t be… doing… this. Anymore.”

Colin feels like he just got punched in the stomach. And he definitely knows what that feels like. “... what?”

It becomes clear that Milagro is crying when she sniffs loudly and wipes her face with the heel of her palm. “I don’t… I don’t want to come between you,” she whimpers. “I don’t want to be that person.”

“Wait, what? You mean Damian?” Colin asks, standing. He kind of wants to hug her, but he’s not sure if that’s allowed right now. “Milagro, what are you talking about?”

“He hates me so much, you can’t even stand to let him know about us, but it’ll come out eventually, and someone’s going to lose somebody unless－”

“Whoa, whoa, hold up!” Colin cries. He reaches out and gently pulls Milagro around to face him, and she starts sniffling harder, barely choking back a sob. With a sigh, he pulls her into a tight hug, and then she’s shaking against him, burying her face in his shirt. “Milagro, Damian does _not_ hate you,” he tells her softly. “So, no, that’s not why I’ve been hiding it. I’m so sorry you were mislead to think that was the case. I didn’t know you were carrying this.”

Milagro shakes her head as much as she can with her face still buried in his t-shirt. “He definitely hates me. He only interacts with me as much as is necessary for missions, and even then, he’ll exclude me as much as he can get away with.”

“Because he can’t stand caring about you!” Colin insists. He grips Milagro by the shoulders and pulls her away slightly so that she can face him. “Milagro, he’s been invested in you and Sin since the four of us joined Titans at nearly the same time. I was his first friend, back when he was lost and alone and desperate for one, but since then, he has tried to play pretend that he hasn’t made any more connections. That he doesn’t have more people that matter to him. Because he thinks if he lies to himself enough, then it won’t hurt if and when something happens to you.”

Milagro is looking him with a mix of disbelief and relief. “Really?” she says quietly.

“Yes, I promise,” says Colin. “Trust me, we tell each other everything. Every time you go off planet, he can’t stop ranting about how dumb you are to go somewhere he can’t keep an eye on you.”

“He can’t…?” Then she snorts as she translates the Damian-speak into blatant worry. “Awe, that’s cute.” She’s giggling to herself then, wiping away her tears with the heel of her hand again. She pulls back a bit, and he lets her go, and she gets her breath again, steadies herself. She finally looks at him again, uncertain once more, and asks, “But if he wouldn’t hate us being together, then why are you hiding it?”

“Dude, he _stalked_ all of my exes!” Colin tells her. “He _tapped_ Elizabeth’s phone!”

“Oh my god, what?” Milagro demands. “Why am I just hearing about this now? Several of your exes were met through the shelter, which makes harassment _extra_ not okay!”

“I usually found out before they did,” Colin says. He sits back on the edge of his bed and explains, “Sometimes I think he backed off, but usually he just got more careful. This is what he does when he _admits_ he’s invested in you; he goes completely overboard. He doesn’t trust anyone I interact with to not break my precious fragile heart.” Colin rolls his eyes.

“You know, up until he figured out the ace thing, I totally thought you two were dating,” Milagro admits, sitting next to him. She shoulders him playfully.

He huffs out a laugh and rolls his eyes again. “Yeah, no, I once misinterpreted that, too. He’s… intense. Do you know he bought me a motorcycle one day after meeting me?” He sighs heavily and admits, “Like I said, he’s my best friend, and we tell each other everything, and I love him like a brother… Or how I assume you love a brother? I have no frame of reference, but… When he failed to notice that we’d started hooking up, I guess because it didn’t change our patterns, I realized how much I missed _privacy_. It’s nice having a friend who isn’t currently interrogating your every move out of his sight, or stalking your girlfriend, or assuming the details of your private life belong to him. I… I know I should tell him. And actively keeping it a secret instead of passively just letting him not notice feels really weird and wrong, I just… Man, I’m not looking forward to him flipping his shit again. Especially as bad as he’s been the last few months.”

Milagro raises an eyebrow at that. “Yeah, I noticed that, too. That he's gotten worse,” she admits. “You know what’s up with that?”

Colin grimaces and tells her, “After we went on hiatus so the girls could have time with their family after what happened to the Outlaws, he quickly went stir crazy and started investigating old unsolveds. He then decided to follow a clue to Tibet where he went AWOL and then came back moody and insisting nothing had happened.”

She may not be Damian’s bestie, but she’s been working with him long enough to know what that pattern of behavior means. “Talia,” she says.

“He says he didn’t find anything,” Colin tells her, “but every time he runs into her again, he regresses right back to his ten-year-old self, all ‘I’m a hunter-killer robot with no feelings who can’t be hurt and doesn’t have friends.’” Colin rolls his eyes yet again. “Besides, he recently admitted that it was Assassins-related _and_ that he found Lazarus-based formula there.”

“Right,” she remembers. “The same fluid that was used to preserve those alien bodies the team uncovered.”

“Well, a similar fluid,” says Colin. He leans into her warmth. “But yeah, I'm pretty sure he ran into Talia at least briefly.”

Milagro rests her chin on his shoulder and gives his cheek a quick peck that makes him blush despite the much less innocent things they’d been doing only ten minutes prior. “Okay,” she says quietly. “In that case… I will let you take as much time as you need. But Colin?”

“Hm?” he asks.

She tilts her head to whisper in his ear, “You better find us a few hours of privacy sooner than later so that I can _ride you like a cowboy_.”

Colin makes a choked noise, and Milagro leans even closer, lips brushing the shell of his ear to see if she can resurrect the mood, when the intercom crackles _again_ with Damian demanding, “Wilkes, are you available _now_?”

Colin growls in frustration as he heads for the door. “I’m going to kick him in his face!” he snarls.

“You could, but then you’d have to tell him why!” Milagro calls after him.

Colin reenters the room briefly only to flip her off.

* * *

Milagro heads to the kitchen to see if anyone’s started on dinner yet (If they haven’t, she’ll start on making something. If they have, she’ll order take out for when the girls inevitably burn it all while arguing.) only to hear the arguing before she’s even out of the hallway. At first it seems normal, but...

“-- know everything! Well, you don’t! You don’t know anything so just shut your face!” sounds far more venomous than the playful teasing that usually fills any space the girls are in.

Milagro hurries out into the kitchen to find Jo has backed into a far corner, wringing her hands, while Lian stands angrily at the entrance and Mari cries by the mixer. “You don’t have to be so mean!” Mari yells at her sister with wet sobs. “I was trying to do something nice!”

“It’s not _nice_ if you do it for yourself!”

“It’s not for me! It’s your birthday cake!”

“Which I told you I don’t want! So the only reason to keep this up is to satisfy your own need for－” Milagro knows whatever comes next is going to be incredibly difficult to take back, so she swings her ring hand out, lassos Lian in green glow, and pulls her back out of the entrance and out of the fight. Lian nearly decks her before realizing who she’s standing in front of. “Oh. Um.”

“What the hell was that?” Milagro demands, pointing to the kitchen, where Mari is _barely_ holding back sobs and Jo, for some reason, looks extremely awkward and guilty.

Lian looks away. “Nothing,” she grumbles.

“Yeah?” Milagro demands. “Stand here.” She goes into the kitchen to calm down Mari. As soon as she starts to pull Mari into a hug, she hears a disgusted sound for Lian’s direction and turns to see that Lian has fled. “HARPER!” she shouts after her, but Mari pulls at her shirt to bring back her attention.

Mari shakes her head, still sobbing. “No, it’s… it’s okay. She always… She hates it when I cry.”

“What?” says Milagro. “That’s ridiculous.”

Mari shrugs, head still bowed against Milagro’s chest. “Whenever I cry, people give me attention and comfort.”

“So?” Milagro demands. “That’s natural! I would hug Lian if she were crying!”

“Yeah, but she wouldn’t be crying where you could see.”

Oh. Thinking back, yeah, Milagro can’t think of a single time Lian has cried in front of the team. Even when she was shot. She teared up from pain, but she didn’t _cry_.

Milagro files away those thoughts to dissect later, pulls Mari into a tighter hug, and turns to Jo. “What was this about?” she asks.

Jo looks away, blushing, but Milagro is quickly learning that Jo will blush at anything. “Uh, it’s Lian’s birthday, but she’s been shutting down any conversation about it,” she reports. “Mari decided to make her a cake, and when Lian caught her she got super mad. And Mari said… uh…” She blushes brighter and stares at the floor.

Milagro feels Mari tense up in her arms and sighs heavily. She rubs Mari’s back to show that she won’t hold whatever it was against her. “What did Mari say, Jo?”

Jo is doing her tomato impression again. “She said ‘You don’t want to be happy while Pop’s away, but Pop would want you to have cake.’”

Milagro groans and rubs circles into Mari’s back. “Oh, Mari…” she says. Once Mari’s sobs abate to sniffles, Milagro pulls back to look her in the eye. “Did you say that because you weren’t thinking or because you wanted to press her buttons?” she asks. “My ring can tell if you’re lying.” Her ring cannot tell if most humanoids are lying, but that is a closely guarded Green Lantern secret.

Mari frowns, dropping her gaze slightly. “... Little of both?” she finally says quietly. “I… I don’t know, I just… wish she wouldn’t beat herself up over these things, and I know she hates me announcing how she feels, but sometimes I don’t like how she feels, and how am I supposed to shut up when she’s feeling something dumb and needs to be told that it’s dumb because she thinks it isn’t? And we always argue when I do that, and that’s fine because it resolves eventually, but… but lately she’s gotten so _mean_ when she’s mad. And she says the worst things ever. And I get so afraid that she’s not going to want to be my sister anymore that I start crying because it feels like everything is over forever, and that makes her more mad at me.”

“Oh, Mari,” Milagro sighs. She pulls her over to a seat at the breakfast table, then nods Jo toward the entryway to indicate that she’s free to go. Jo flees in a blur. Milagro sits across from Mari and tells her, “You know, when I inherited Hal’s ring, my brother and I fought so bad it came to blows. And then we fought some more. And then I went on a space mission, came back, and fought some more. But never once were we not brother and sister. And eventually, we got over it, and everything was fine again. And trust me, I’m pretty sure your cake wasn’t _that_ bad of a move.”

“Yeah, but you’re his real sister,” Mari mumbles.

“And you’re _her_ real sister,” Milagro assures her. “She’s as Tamaranean as you are human. She can deny it all she wants, but I can totally see it in her. I know you have too.” At that, she sees a hint of a smile at the edge of Mari’s pout. “She carries -and’r and Grayson and Wayne in her soul right alongside Harper and Deschene and even Nguyen, just like you carry Harper and Deschene in your soul. Hell, she’s even got it embedded in her skin, and _your_ tattoo is in _two_ places: her heart and her right wrist. She loves you and trusts you more than anything in the world. No fight is _ever_ going to change that okay?”

“Then why does she act like she hates me?”

Wow is that a punch to the gut. Where has Milagro heard those words very, _very_ recently?

Mari must have sensed the shift in Milagro’s emotions because she looks up at her with confusion.

Milagro shakes it off, remembers what Colin said, the fact that Mari says these bad fights have only been happening recently, and tells her, “Maybe she’s worried. Maybe she’s more worried than she ever been before.”

Mari nods seriously. “She is. I can feel that. But why… why be mean?”

Milagro sighs again and explains, “Sometimes it’s easier than admitting you’re vulnerable.”


	2. Chapter 2

Milagro finds Lian in the gym, pummeling a punching bag like it had personally insulted her. Milagro folds her arms, leans against Colin’s desk in the corner, and says, “So.”

Lian growls under her breath. “I’ll apologize when I’m calm,” she says. “I can’t talk to her right now.”

Milagro shrugs, despite the fact that Lian can’t see it with her back turned to the desk. “Alright.” She waits while Lian gets in several more punches, then asks, “Is that helping?”

Lian punches once more. Twice more. Then stops, hands hanging at her sides. “No,” she admits. Finally, she turns to Milagro. “You have a better idea?”

Milagro shrugs again. She doesn’t have a plan yet, so she starts working her way through the problem out loud to see if one will come to her. “It’s your birthday. You don’t want to celebrate because bad shit has happened. You feel guilty not celebrating because your dad would want you to be happy.”

Lian shrugs back and begins to peel off the wrap on her hands. “Yeah, so?”

“So don’t be happy,” says Milagro. Then, with the budding of an idea, she says, “You’re twenty-one today. So do what twenty-one-year-olds do: be stupid instead.”

Lian laughs at that. “What are you talking about?” she asks, though already some of the tension has eased out of her.

Milagro stands up straight again and steps forward, uncrossing her arms. “There’s about as much age difference between you and me as there is between you and Mari,” she says. “I know that’s hard on you. You grow increasingly closer to being a senior, but you’re still lumped in with the juniors. You have a lot of the experience, none of the authority, and only a fraction of the respect. You’re a legal adult and still sitting at the kids table.

“So why celebrate your twenty-first with a cake your little sister made? Mark it with the rite of passage you deserve,” Milagro reasons. “Step away from the kids table and come drinking with me.”

Lian looks away. “Pop would－” But she cuts herself off, frowning. She shakes her head and looks back to Milagro, considers. Finally, she says, “Yeah, okay. Let me get clean and dressed.”

Milagro nods and grins. “See you in the garage in fifteen!”

Lian nods and heads toward the stairs.

Milagro pulls out of her phone and begins texting Colin.

> (shamrock): Lian and I are going out jsyk  
>  (shamrock): bbl  
>  (fist): k  
>  (fist): think u can help me bury damians corpse when u get back?  
>  (shamrock): lmao You’re still mad about the interruption?  
>  (fist): he thinks the argument is over because he diverted my attention to his stupid investigation  
>  (fist): but its pretty clear he still thinks he owns me and can just demand my attention whenever he wants  
>  (shamrock): Bro, he totally owns you. He’s owned you for years. I don’t know how you haven’t noticed.  
>  (fist): ur supposed to take my side :P  
>  (shamrock): *you’re  
>  (fist): i want a divorce  
>  (shamrock): :*

* * *

Fifteen minutes later, Milagro is surprised that Lian knows how to dress to go out, wearing the dark jeans and motorcycle boots more typical her costumed identity with a simple tank top and jacket. “Huh, I thought you’d come dressed for the library,” she tells her honestly.

Lian shrugs. “I usually wear skirts to the library,” she says. “Figured we’d take the bike.”

Milagro is confused for a moment. Then, she laughs. “Oh, honey, no. Earth bars suck. We’re booming there.”

* * *

Damian comes down for dinner only to be greeted by the smell of smoke and an oven currently thawing out from Jo’s ice-breath. He looks at the two teens skeptically. “Where is Harper?” he asks.

Mari shifts and looks away. “She went drinking with Ms. Reyes,” she informs him.

Damian raises an eyebrow at that. “Isn’t she… religious or something?” he says, squinting as he tries to remember.

“What?” demands Mari. “No. Pop doesn’t want anyone in the family using drugs.”

Jo barks an accidental laugh. When Mari shoots her a glare, she covers her mouth and blushes but says, “Mari, they went to a _bar_ not a meth lab!”

“Alcohol is also a drug, _Joa_ ,” Mari snaps.

“No, it’s not.”

“Yes, it is.”

“Really?” Jo looks to Damian for confirmation.

He shrugs. “Depending on your definition, yes,” he tells her. He turns to Mari and asks, “Does Milagro know that Lian has never had _any_ such substance before in her entire life?”

The girls exchange glances. They shrug.

“... Right. Hold on.” Damian pulls his phone out of his pocket and dials Milagro. It goes immediately to voicemail. So, he calls Lian. It goes immediately to voicemail. Swearing, he calls Colin.

“Didn’t I just get rid of you?” Colin demands in lieu of a greeting.

“Do you know where Milagro is?” Damian asks. “I can’t get ahold of her.”

“Yeah, she went out with Lian.”

“I know, but where specifically?”

“Knowing Milagro? Probably Pijdig-5.”

“... She went off-world?”

“Probably. Why?”

“Nevermind, I can wait.”

Colin snorts at that. “Since when?” he demands.

Damian ignores this jab and hangs up on Colin. He replaces the phone in his pocket and shrugs to the girls. “Well, I tried to prevent it,” he tells them. “Now a Lian that becomes drunk very easily and becomes sick soon afterward is Milagro’s own special problem to deal with.” He looks at the oven. “And this is mine, I suppose.”

“Wait,” Mari says, hands on her hips and head tilted sideways as she peers at him. “You’re _embarrassed_.”

“No, I don’t get embarrassed,” Damian insists. He pushes past her into the kitchen to get the folder full of takeout menus they keep.

“Yeah, except you do ‘cuz you are,” Mari says with a grin. She looks to Jo for confirmation, but Jo just shrugs.

“I think you need to ask Raven for tips again, because your sensitivity is obviously malfunctioning,” Damian growls.

He turns and tries to hand her the folder of menus, but she only grins up at him defiantly. Jo is now also tilting her head and peering at him curiously. “Why _did_ you react to Milagro taking Lian out like that?” Jo wonders.

Damian groans and informs her, “Because someone who has never had alcohol before will get drunk _much_ faster than experienced drinkers, and, since their judgements will be impaired, neither will notice it happening until she’s puking.”

“How do you know?” Jo pushes.

“Because I know everything,” Damian tells her. He waves the folder at her. “Now pick a restaurant.”

They hear the door of the nearest staircase open and turn to see Colin emerge from the hallway only a moment later. “Hey, guys, what’s for dinner?” he asks.

“Haven’t decided yet,” Damian tells him, again trying to hand over the folder full of takeout menus as he almost never decides dinner himself.

Colin glances at the oven and frowns. “Awe, guys, again?” he demands.

“ _Actually_ ,” Mari says, sidling up to Colin and bumping his arm with her shoulder. “Damian was just telling us about how he’s familiar with the dangers of alcohol.”

“Oh?” says Colin, blinking down at her. “Is this about the tequila incident?”

Damian groans and considers the merits of fighting his way out of the kitchen, against his own teammates. Mari grins and demands, “What’s the tequila incident?”

Colin looks around at Damian’s embarrassment, Mari’s grin of victory, and Jo’s evasive body language, and then he realizes what’s actually going on. He grins viciously at his best friend. Revenge is sweet. “So,” he begins, ignoring Damian’s whispered promise of murder. “Of our little cluster of Titans, Milagro is the oldest, I’m second, Damian’s third, and then Sin is the baby,” he explains, taking a seat on a bar stool, but still carefully positioned between Damian and the exit. “So, when Milagro turned 21, Gardner took her to get trashed at a bar on Pijdig-5. Apparently, it was actually fun for her. When I turned 21, she took me bar crawling in L.A.”

“What’s bar crawling?” Jo asks, confused.

Damian explains, “You go to an area with many bars along one street. You order a drink at one, consume it, move on to the next, order another, repeat.”

“What’s the point of that?” asks Mari.

“To get sick,” Damian tells her.

Colin rolls his eyes. “It’s a social activity; he wouldn’t understand,” he explains. “It’s the most fun if you ask the each bartender to give you a surprise. But also it just gets you out there and among lots of different people. It _was_ fun, except aside from the hangover, I also got the _flu_ due to exposure to so many people in such a short time _while_ my immunity was compromised by alcohol.”

“And then what happened with Da－ Robin?” asks Jo. Damian shoots her a look, and she looks guilty, but not enough to hinder her curiosity.

Colin snickers and looks Damian right in the eyes as he continues the story. “Well, we were a pretty tight group by then, so Milagro and I really, _really_ wanted to initiate him to our little club of dumbassery,” he explains. “He didn’t want to, but she called him a wuss, which, as you know, is the greatest of insults.” The girls snickered at this. “Nonetheless, he still refused to go out with us because of the whole flu thing. So Milagro proposed a movie-oriented drinking game. For the reference: Never ever do any of those; they are designed to give you the worst experience ever. But she found one online for the movie _Clue_ that didn’t look too bad, and she decided this movie was perfect for him.”

“It was a stupid movie,” Damian sulks.

“That’s what makes it great, Damian,” Colin teases. “ _Anyway_ , I forget exactly what the rules were, but we were supposed to take a shot every time something happened on screen. Last man standing wins. Unfortunately, what we had to drink was this giant _plastic_ bottle of cheap tequila from the back of the cupboard that no one knew who had bought. And it tasted _disgusting_. So I bowed out after four shots, because I couldn’t stand it anymore. Milagro and Damian figured out how to drink it without tasting it much, and she made it another dozen or so before it became obvious to her that the shots were going to be a lot more frequent than she had thought. She tried to call off the game, but he thought she was trying to go easy on him and he refused. They get a little further into the movie when Milagro goes to the bathroom, realizes that was a much more difficult journey than it should have been, and caves.

“For the reference, to win, all he had to do was drink one more shot than Milagro,” Colin explains. “He did not stop there, though.”

Jo and Mari are aghast. “ _Why_?” they both demand of Damian.

Wearily, Damian rubs at his temple. “Pride?” he guesses. “I was very drunk and not capable of making good decisions.”

Colin nods in agreement. “Yeah, so Milagro and I try to get him not to, but quickly give up, figuring he’ll quit before long,” he continues to narrate. “But instead, he actually made it about two-thirds of the way through the movie before he passed out. We were concerned that he had alcohol poisoning, so we woke him up. He brushed us off, got up to go to the bathroom, fell down, and puked.” The girls give appropriately horrified gasps. “Milagro hauled his ass to the bathroom where he spent the next twenty minutes or so puking up _everything_. Once he was empty, he tried to go to bed, but we were concerned about continued puking and wanted him to stay up longer. The compromise was that he slept in the bathroom. Next to the toilet and the cat box.”

“Oh my god,” Jo gasps, hand over her mouth.

“And _then_ ,” Colin continues, “because he’s a fucking bastard that lucks out in everything, he had _no_ hangover. He got up at 5:30 the next morning, made breakfast, and went right back to his routine.”

Damian shrugs that off, but does look slightly proud of himself.

Mari gives her leader a skeptical look. “So… did you ever drink again? After all that?” she asks.

“Absolutely not,” Damian tells her. “Drinking is stupid. Even a little bit will impair judgement and coordination and mental perception.”

Colin laughs at that. “That’s the point, Damian.”

“Yeah, for stupid people,” Damian shoots back.

Mari, however, looks extremely satisfied. She gives a decisive nod and declares, “Then I am okay with Milagro taking Lian out drinking.”

Colin gives her a skeptical look. “That’s not really for you－” But he’s interrupted by what sounds something like a drowning growl.

They all turn to the source － Jo, who is holding her stomach in embarrassment. “Um, as entertaining as that story was,” she mumbles, “Do you think we could order food now?”

Damian plucks a menu out of the folder and hands it to Colin. “Palace of Persia, and you’re paying. You owe me.”

Colin laughs at that. “Okay, fair.”

Jo is immediately interested. “Persian food?” she asks. “I’ve never tried that.”

“SAMPLER FEAST!” Mari shouts victoriously, floating up with her arms in the air. Colin laughs, hands over his credit card, and sends them on their way. The closest takeout places are well familiar with Mari by now, and it’s time they were introduced to Jo. He knows by now that whatever the girls pick will be fine for the group, as Colin learned as a kid to eat anything put in front of him, and Damian － though he hates admitting he likes things － is a fan of 95% of Palace of Persia’s menu.

Damian scowls after them and grumbles, “I had been trying to avoid humiliating myself, thank you.”

Colin snorts. “Dude, it’s good to take yourself down a peg occasionally,” he tells him. “It builds trust. They know they can trust you not just with their lives, but with their _selves_ because you’ve now done the same.” He grins and shoulders Damian hard. “Besides, you owe me.”

“I still don’t understand why you were so mad about being interrupted from paperwork,” Damian grumbles.

Colin rolls his eyes and sighs. Now is not the time. “Maybe I’ll tell you when you’re older.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Tequila Incident actually happened to me. It is also known as "That Time I Drank Myself Under the Table." A few details were changed to make the story fit Damian: I was 24, I'd had alcohol before, we played just because my friend wanted to play a movie drinking game for some reason, and there were three others playing who all bowed out due to the horrid taste of the plastic tequila. I just had an unfortunate amount of machismo that did not get better with being drunk. And yes, the next morning, I got up and made myself breakfast, feeling fine except for the fact that I was starving. But when I was coming up with Unfortunate Drinking Stories for the characters, I realized that "drinking yourself under the table" is absolutely something Damian would do.
> 
> Colin's story is also based on personal experience -- I have come down with a flu or cold every single time I've been drinking in public.


	3. Chapter 3

Lian makes a face as she finishes the small green jar of skunky liquid in front of her. “You owe me five dollars,” she tells her supervisor. She leans back so that her head rests against the top of the seat at the booth they're seated at. “How strong was that? I feel like I'm done already.”

Milagro snickers at that. “It's the weakest thing they have here,” she explains. “It's the equivalent of about a beer and a half.”

Lian makes a disgruntled noise and still doesn't sit up.

Milagro watches her for a moment. Her eyes slowly widen with realization. “Wait, is this the first time you've ever drank?” she asks.

“Yup,” says Lian. She snorts, drops her head again, and reaches for her jar only to remember it's empty. Instead, she steals Milagro’s bottle as she explains, “My father wouldn't approve.”

Milagro snorts in disbelief. “You don't really strike me as the goody two shoes type,” she says.

“Hey, this tastes way better than what you gave me,” Lian complains after drinking from Milagro’s bottle.

Milagro snorts again. “Yeah, the fruity shit is a tricky bastard.” she flags down a waitress and orders another bottle for herself.

Lian sets the bottle down. Frowns at it. “I'm not a goody two shoes,” she says. “Not how I'd think of it. It's just…” She sighs and leans back again. “Mari doesn't remember what it was like before Pop and Dad and Ma settled their shit out. But for my earliest years, it was just me and Pop. Sometimes we stayed with Grampa when shit was rough. And Mom and Jason were around sometimes. Dad slept over sometimes. Saw Queen on holidays because God forbid we spend that time with real family…”

Lian sits up again and takes another swig from the bottle. She continues, “But, for the most part, it was him and me. So we had to be good. Because we were all we had. And if we weren't good the whole thing would fall apart.” She shakes her head. Drinks again. Says, “And then suddenly we were twice as big, ten times as wealthy, because Ma and Dad and Mary got tacked on. Dad’s huge extended family with it. Ma’s royal family. And I think, for a while, I was afraid of not being good, or else it might fall apart. I couldn't understand Mary's bratty moments because didn't she understand how fragile this all is? But it was just the opposite. The three of them were so much more stable than any one or two of them.”

“So now you're always going to be the good girl?” Milagro asks.

Lian scowls and raises her bottle. “I'm here, aren't I?” She takes another drink.

The waitress brings Milagro her new bottle, and Milagro pays her. She returns her attention to Lian. Sighs. “Lian, you and I both know this is just a bit of much-needed rebellion; you're never going to come back here with me,” she says. “And that's fine. I'm not the type to think everybody should be living my life. Hell knows, I'm not having fun with it. But, Lian, you put way too much pressure on yourself. Look, I did my research before forming a new team around you and Mari. I know your pop’s story. I know that you're what got him to actually stay clean. I know you're what got him to turn his life around, take responsibility for himself, and make a better life. And you were a _baby_. So you must know that you don't have to be Atlas to support your family. You just have to be _there_.”

Lian is frowning at the table instead of looking Milagro in the eye. She takes another drink, keeps staring at the table. Finally, she asks, “Where's the restroom?”

Milagro turns and gestures. “See the bar over there? There's a hallway just off the left of it. You want the door with two triangles pointing down on it.”

Lian raises an eyebrow, but accepts this answer and slides out of her seat with just a small stumble. As soon as Lian is away from the booth, Milagro steals back the bottle and then flags down a waitress to ask for water. She turns to check that Lian has gone the right way just in time to see Lian trip and fall.

Only for a huge, heavily muscled alien to reach out and grab her to help steady her, its face showing concern that Lian, face very nearly in the floor, doesn't see. Instead, she pulls up, twists, and punches it square in the face on pure instinct.

“Awe, shit,” groans Milagro.

* * *

“Um, why are you making that face?” Jo asks curiously as they all actually eat at the big dining table for once.

“What face?” asks Damian.

Mari barely glances at him before informing Jo, “That's the face he makes when he's happy.”

“I am never happy,” Damian argues, but there's no real bite to it.

Mari sticks her tongue out at him before announcing, “You can't lie to me!”

“Prove it,” Damian taunts back. He throws a chunk of meat at her, but she easily catches it in her mouth. She grins triumphantly.

“Are y-?” Jo starts, but then she cuts herself off, blushes, and stuffs food in her face as an excuse not to talk.

Colin glances at her curiously. “What?” he asks.

Jo shakes her head quickly, eventually finishes chewing, and then says, “I was going to ask something dumb, but then I realized it was dumb, so I didn't need to ask it.”

“Oh, I ask dumb things all the time, don't worry about it,” says Mari.

Colin snickers and adds, “Yeah, peppering Damian with dumb questions is, like, one of our favorite hobbies around here.”

“I hate you all,” Damian grumbles around his food.

“No, you don't,” both Colin and Mari inform him.

“Speaking of fun,” says Mari. “Can we play Cards Against Humanity after this?”

Damian gives her a Look. “Do you want to explain to Superman how we killed his daughter by forcing all of her blood to rush into her face?”

“Awe.”

“We have an entire games closet, Mari,” Colin tells her. “Go pick something Jo can be included in.”

Mari, apparently done eating, promptly flies off with a chirped, “'Kay!”

“Isn't it her turn to do dishes?” asks Damian.

“She thinks she can trick us out of noticing,” Colin tells him. “I'll make her do it before any games start.”

“Hey, why do we have this?” Mari asks, reappearing at the table and holding out a big wooden board with letters and symbols on it.

Colin grumbles and grabs it from her. “That should be in the communications room, not the games closet.” He leans back and drops it against the wall behind his chair to move later with all the air of a teacher with a confiscated comic book. Mari accepts this answer and disappears again.

“But… it's a game, isn't it?” says Jo. “Ouija boards? They're a pranking game. I mean, not that I want to, but… that means it belongs in the games closet?”

Colin shakes his head, finishes another mouthful, and says, “Ouija is a branded game by Milton Bradley. That's a talking board. It's used for extra-dimensional communications under specific circumstances and with magical supervision.”

“O-oh.”

“So what did you want to know?” Damian asks.

“W-what?” Jo stutters, caught off-guard.

“The stupid question,” he reminds her. He shrugs. “I'm tired, so my guard is down. You might as well take advantage like Mari does if you're actually curious.” He ignores the way Colin smirks approvingly.

“Oh, um, I…” Jo tucks her head, blushing. “I was going to ask, with the way you like this food so much, if you're Iranian, but that's dumb because liking Chinese food doesn't make me Chinese.”

Damian just shrugs again. “Yeah, but if you had made that assumption, you wouldn't have asked. Instead, you had a very small lead, and you followed it. Good job.” He glances away when Jo's surprised expression brightens at his approval. “ _But_ I'm unable to answer it. I don't have an ethnic or national identity. I suppose there might be some relationship, as I sometimes choose this restaurant because it is the most similar I've found to my grandfather’s cooking.”

That surprises Colin, the first he's heard of it. “You mean the _evil_ grandpa?” he asks. “You have nostalgia for your evil grandpa’s cooking?”

Damian just shrugs again and returns to his meal. Before anyone can press for more information, Mari reappears with three boardgames. “Monopoly, Candy Land, or Pictionary?”

* * *

The one plus of being trained by Guy Gardner is that Milagro can fight without her ring, as there are situations in which he considers using it to be “cheating.” There are an unfortunate number of Lanterns who are simply crap without their ring. Of course, those Lanterns would probably not find themselves on the faulted end of a bar brawl. Still, if she plays her cards right, it's possible that she can get through this without having her ass hauled to Oa for un-Lantern-like behavior.

A punch to someone's jaw and a shoulder to someone else's center of gravity has her _almost_ finally within arm’s reach of Lian. And then some big orange thing with horns hauls Lian up off her feet and body-slams her back into the bar. Oh, the poor alien is going to regret that.

Drunk Lian is a hell of a lot more dangerous than Sober Lian, it turns out. Having already figured out that she can't use kicks to gain space without falling over, Lian instead is now fighting like a wildcat in a bathtub. Biting, scratching, headbutting, jabbing with elbows and knees, getting a swing in where she can, targeting mostly the face. She finally pushes the brute off her with a knee to its face as Milagro tries to punch and shove her way through the brawling crowd. Unfortunately, that knee to the face also accidentally propelled Lian into an awkward twist, and she falls backwards off the bar, taking several bottles down with her as she flails. Milagro winces and prays they weren't expensive.

“REYZ!” shouts the angry bartender who had taken shelter at the far end and was now keeping other angry patrons from following after Lian by spraying them down with a sink hose. “OXHN OJND JNEMKI UTMANR TOPRIKASTO!”

“I'm _trying_!” Milagro shouts back at him. Desperately, she ducks down under the brawl, sweeps out one leg to trip as many as she can, and then vaults through the temporary gap in fighters. She makes it to the bar, hops over, and puts up a shield as transparent as she can make it. Maybe, _maybe_ no one will notice its green glow.

“RIKTAR, REYZ!” the bartender demands, mispronouncing her name again. “DOPRIKASTO!”

“Urg,” says Lian, easing herself off the floor. She hisses in pain as glass bites into her palms.

Milagro grabs Lian by the chin and forces the girl to face her, being sure to use her most Don't-Fuck-With-Me expression. “Harper, listen to me and do exactly as I say. I am going to use this shield to plow our way through to the door. You are going to run right at my goddamn heels. You will not lag behind. You will not get distracted. You will not fight. You will only follow me. Is that clear?”

Lian nods, then winces.

“Words, Harper,” Milagro insists.

“Yes, ma'am,” Lian says. “I only follow you.”

“Good girl. On the count of three,” Milagro says. Milagro begins to shift her forcefield into a plow shape that will scoop bodies off to the side. “One.” With movements a little too slow, Lian moves up into a crouch. There are cuts in her jeans, and her hands are bleeding profusely. “Two.” Both of them move into a running position, facing the gap at the side of the bar intended to let staff in and out. “Three!”

She and Lian take off running at top speed, Milagro’s forcefield successfully pushing aggressors to the side until they make it to the rear exit, where Milagro throws open the door, lets Lian through, and then slams the door behind them. Finding nothing to block the door with, she does the next best thing and grabs Lian and takes flight.


	4. Chapter 4

Milagro concentrates on the green light construct of a pair of tweezers as she plucks the remnants of broken glass bottle out of Lian's skin. “Unfortunately, I can't construct disinfectant,” she mumbles. “Or bandages… Should I have left these in?”

“Let's just go home,” Lian grumbles. She leans back against the wall of the alley they've hidden themselves in as they wait for the attention of the local police to die down.

“Well, unfortunately, the only boom tube I know of on this planet is back at the _bar_ ,” Milagro growls. She pulls another small shard from Lian's palm and presses her thumb to the wound to staunch the bleeding, causing Lian to hiss. There's a part of Milagro that's satisfied by that small retribution. “And since they are probably never ever letting me back in there - to my _favorite_ bar, by the way - that means we have to wait until it closes and then break and enter.”

Lian grumbles sleepily, sits up enough to pull her phone out of her pocket, glances at it, grumbles sourly, and then puts it back away. Milagro rolls her eyes and tells her, “Yeah, unfortunately, I didn't pick the alien planet with a _Verizon tower_.”

Lian shifts uncomfortably, grumbles again, and then admits, “I think I have glass in my ass.”

Milagro raises an eyebrow, then raises her right hand to scan Lian with the ring. She snickers. “Yup, you definitely do.”

Lian sighs heavily, shifts forward again, and starts pulling off her shirt. “Whoa whoa whoa!” Milagro says, yanking the hem back down as Lian gives her a confused look. “The hell are you doing, drunko?”

“Bandages,” Lian says like it's obvious. “You're being nice enough to pull glass out of me, the least I can do is sacrifice some fabric.”

“We still have to get around in public until we find a boom tube!” Milagro insists.

Lian just shrugs. “We're on an alien planet. What does the public care about my monkey mammaries?”

“Have you never noticed the absurd amount of aliens that are humanoid?” Milagro demands.

“On Tamaran, they wear a lot less,” Lian points out.

“Yeah, and from what I've heard, old Krypton would've thought the super family costumes were downright _slutty_ ,” Milagro counters.

Lian sighs again. “Okay, but…” She holds out the hand Milagro had been working on, flexes it once, and then shows Milagro as the cuts begin to slowly bleed anew.

Milagro sighs heavily. “Fine, give me your stupid shirt.” Lian pulls it over her head - and thank goodness the girl has a practical taste in bras or this would be even more awkward - and hands it over. As Milagro uses light-constructed scissors to begin dissecting the tank top into two-inch strips of fabric, she says, “So you've been off-planet before?”

“Mm, just Tamaran and Okara,” says Lian. “Tamaran for political bullshit and the occasional family holiday, Okara for summer training.”

“Yeah?” says Milagro. “Whole family vacations to another planet. What's that like?”

Lian shrugs. “Well, usually, someone's trying to kill us by the end of the week, so everyone is always tense,” she explains. “Mary used to glue herself to my side, but she's gotten better. Dad goes out as little as possible because the, uh, _culture_ bothers him. He keeps his eyes on the ground as much as possible and has learned to keep conversations brief lest his polite charm be misinterpreted _again_.” Milagro snickers at that. “Pop never had a problem with it, though,” she says a little more quietly. “He was always _very_ enthusiastic about Tamaranean ‘culture.’”

Now with a lap full of fabric scraps, Milagro looks up to ask Lian for her hand again only to find that the girl has curled up with her forehead pressed against her knees. “You dizzy?” she asks, and Lian makes a non-committal grunt. “Okay, but I need your hand again.”

Lian holds out her hand again without moving the rest of herself. Milagro gets to work pulling the rest of the glass out. “You always talk about other people when I ask about you,” she says. She works more quickly this time as she pulls out tiny shards, since she doesn't bother to press down the bleeding anymore.

Lian shrugs again. “You've only talked about me since we got here.”

Okay, fair. “Alright, so let's make it even, then,” says Milagro. “I ask you a question. You ask me a question. Let's get to know each other outside of missions and reports. Our only bonding experiences can't be a bar fight and pulling glass out of your ass.”

Lian winces and looks away. “Yeah, how about we leave anything that involves taking my pants off until we get back to actual medical facilities?” she says.

“Fair enough. Have no idea how I'd fabric-bandage your ass anyway.”

“Stop talking about my ass,” Lian grumbles, but it's clear that she's not actually mad. She wipes her face with the back of her free hand before looking at Milagro, and that's when Milagro realizes she's been crying. Milagro desperately tries to think back over the conversation to figure out what caused this but is quickly distracted by Lian taking up the suggested challenge with the first question, “Why don't you hide your identity anymore?”

Milagro shrugs. “I was mostly hiding it because my parents wanted me to stay in school, and it's hard enough getting through high school without adding superhero politics on top,” she says. “But… do you know about the Beetle thing? It's kind of an open secret among the hero crew, but I try not to out him if I can help it?”

“That Blue Beetle is your brother?” asks Lian. “Yeah, I don't know if anyone told me, but you two act like close siblings, so…”

“Yeah, we are,” Milagro says with a soft smile. According to another ring scan, she has finally removed the last speck of glass from Lian's hand, so she begins wrapping the palm with fabric as tightly as she can. “So the reason I gave the League and my family was that it was to protect Jaime. Compared to his amazing heroic sister, Jaime looked like even more of a dweeb - I mean he went to _dentist school_ for Christ's sake - so who would ever believe he was Blue Beetle? It peeved everyone off because I was supposed to keep it secret until graduation, and I hadn't asked anyone’s advice, but whatever, most Lanterns don't have secret identities.”

Lian is surprised by Milagro’s choice of words. “So, you're saying that wasn't the actual reason?”

Milagro laughs. She takes Lian's other hand and begins to wipe it clean with a rag of ripped shirt before starting to pluck glass again. “So there was this boy. He and I had been dating seven months, and he made me feel like a princess, and I thought the world of him, and we got really hot and heavy really fast. One night, we were in the back of his car, and he was trying to go too far again, and I decided, yeah, okay, I'm up for this,” Milagro narrates.

“What does this have to do with your identity?” Lian asks.

“Ssh, I'm getting to it,” Milagro tells her. “So, short story short, because it only took a few minutes: he totally cut out foreplay once he got the green light, I guess afraid I'd change my mind before he got his dick wet, and it was hella uncomfortable, and I had absolutely no fun. Like when _he_ finished, he started to clean up and move back to the front, and I'm like ‘uh, you're done already?’ and he got mad! I didn't even say what I was actually thinking, but he was acting like I'd dragged him!”

“Oh my god,” Lian gasps, hand over her mouth.

“And then, right when he drops me off? He breaks up with me because I'm needy!” Milagro exclaims. “I was mad for a week before I figured out the perfect retribution. I dropped my mask when fighting and was identified within days of my next mission.” She cackles happily at the memory. “Not only did he now know that he passed up and pissed off the most awesome girl he would ever know, but － with a Green Lantern’s word against his? － absolutely _no one_ was ever going to believe him that we’d done it when I said we hadn't.”

“You _gaslit_ him?” Lian demands, shocked, horrified, and extremely viciously amused.

“Meh, he deserved it,” Milagro says, waving it off. “Hopefully, he learned a lesson about manipulating people.” Lian snorts at that. “So I shared my horrible virginity story; what's yours?”

Lian shrugs. “Don't have one,” she says.

“Oh.” Milagro blushes as she continues pulling out glass bits. “I didn't mean to presume. I mean… a lot of people wait until later for various reasons and－”

She's interrupted by Lian bursting into laughter. “Oh my god,” she groans between giggles. “Milagro, I _meant_ it wasn't horrible!”

“Oh!” says Milagro. “Well, that's… Actually, it sounds like cheating. How the hell was it not awful? Are you sure you know what good is?”

Lian's laughter dies down into low chuckles, and that cocky, self-satisfied, lop-sided smirk absolutely marks her as Red Arrow’s daughter. It also highlights to Milagro like a punch to the gut that she hasn't seen a single trace of it since she got back, until now. “Yeah, definitely sure,” Lian chuckles.

“Ugh, forget I said anything,” Milagro groaned. She definitely didn't need to hear about how a straightedge librarian only just now old enough to drink was having more fun than her.

After her giggles die down, Lian admits, “I did cheat, actually.” That piques Milagro’s interest again enough to look up from her work, and Lian continues, gaze a little distant but still with her happy smirk, “It was a couple of years ago. I wanted to have the experience, but I wasn't succeeding in finding any long term relationships, and I didn't want something completely random… We were on Tamaran. I guess she noticed my frustration. She apparently liked me. She made a proposal to… _teach me_. And she did. For several weeks.”

“I hate you so much,” Milagro tells her with a half-hearted glare. “How does that count as cheating?”

Lian shrugs. “Most Tamaraneans have very low-level empathic abilities. Nothing like Mary; we're still not entirely sure how that happened. It's kind of equivalent to a human who's just really good at reading people,” she explains. "But for sex? Especially your first time, when, like, you don't even have the vocabulary to communicate what you want or how you're doing? It means your partner can read you very well and make sure you're having just as much fun as them."

“I super hate you so much,” Milagro groans in jealousy, combined with embarrassment from having let them onto such an explicit topic. She really should have had the decency to not ask about Lian's sex life if she hadn't wanted to know, but she's way too used to Lantern bravado. She maybe plucks the next piece of glass a little roughly. “Your turn to ask a question.”

Lian takes a while to think, apparently not normally that curious about her team supervisor. Milagro quickly grows bored and begins to take inventory of the white ink tattoos that she usually isn't allowed to see. There is, of course, the star-in-moon on her right wrist and again over her heart. (In reverse of each other, for some reason.) There's a shooting star on her left bicep where it's usually, but not always, covered by sleeves. Though they can't be seen right now, Milagro knows there's thunderbird on Lian’s left calf and a tiny wolf on her right ankle. What she hadn't been able to see until now was the _something_ on her navel (from Lian’s hunched position, all Milagro can tell without too obviously looking is that there is white ink there), but also that there was a simple archery bow tattooed horizontally across her shoulders with an incredibly accurate arrow running straight up her spine.

Milagro remembers the year that they'd thought Jaime was dead. That year after he'd suddenly and inexplicably disappeared and didn't come back and no one could explain why. She remembers feeling so and hurt and so very guilty for all the mean bratty little sister thoughts she'd ever had about him. Had she once wished him gone? Was this her fault? Did she make him leave? She had started going into his room in order to piss him off so he'd have to come back to yell at her. Then, she moved into his room so that she'd be first to know if her ever snuck back to get his stuff. And then she stayed in his room because that's where his stuff was - the only things she had left of him.

She thinks maybe she understands what it might feel like to lose your metaphorical spine, the center of yourself, the thing that defines your reality.

“What's the biggest secret you've ever kept?” Lian finally asks. “Until confessing just now, obviously.”

Milagro doesn't even have to think about her answer. “I am 97% sure Damian is going gray already and dying his hair to cover it,” she says.

Lian looks at her with disbelief. Rude. “97%?”

“Well, it's slightly possible it's just changing from black to brown, and he dyed it because this is upsetting his inner bat,” says Milagro. “Because, y’know, he is the darkness and whatnot.”

Lian snorts again.

“What's the tattoo on your bellybutton?” asks Milagro.

“Hm?” Lian looks down as though she doesn't know. “Oh, it's a grinning cat. Y’know… Cheshire.”

“I thought you hated your mom?” says Milagro.

Lian just shrugs. “Still my mom,” she says. Her next pause is much briefer as she decides her next question. “So what's with you and Wilkes and Robin?”

“We're friends?” Milagro says, confused.

“Okay, but you and Wilkes are fucking,” says Lian.

“ _As a side-benefit of **dating** , you little turd!_”

“Okay, but then there's the Damian thing,” argues Lian.

“What Damian thing? I'm not fucking him!” Milagro objects loudly. “And he's not fucking anybody!”

“Yeah, but he's totally wrapped up in you two.”

“It's called having a friend!” Milagro is practically shrieking now. “I can't believe－ Look, not everyone is like your weirdo parents, okay?”

Before Lian can press the point, they're interrupted by shouts of an alien cop demanding what all the noise is about. Milagro swears, stuffs the remains of Lian's shirt in her jacket pockets, grabs Lian by the wrist, and takes off running.


	5. Chapter 5

“Oh my god,” Jo moans, head in her arms, when Colin's representation of whatever the hell is on his card is the characteristic long oval and two circles of a cartoon penis and Mari immediately guesses “Dad?”

“Is this really better than Cards Against Humanity?” Jo demands, face bright red as Colin reconsiders his drawing, erases the oval and draws it again much shorter.

“Oliver Queen,” guesses Damian. Colin has to stop drawing so he can laugh so hard he's wheezing.

Mari is giggling delightedly into her hand at Jo's mortification. “Welcome to game night with Gothamites,” she teases.

Colin, still giggling, starts drawing a flag next to the tiny penis.

“President Luthor!” Damian and Mari guess at the same time.

“Yep,” Colin wheezes out through giggles. He puts a mark each under Damian and Mari’s scores, and erases his terrible drawings on the whiteboard that he and Jo had hauled into the rec room for the game. “Jo, you're up next.”

“Hrng,” Jo says unhappily, but she manages to squirm her way up to the front of the room as Colin collapses on the couch next to Damian.

Damian already has out his tablet again, frowning at the building security. The boom tube still hasn't been activated again. “Shouldn't they be back by now?” he grumbles.

Colin laughs at him and rolls his eyes. “Chill out, _Mom_ ,” he teases. “Milagro and Lian are the most reliable people we have. They're fine.”

* * *

Milagro leads the way through back alleys to circle back to the bar. She scans the bar with her ring and sighs in disappointment. “There's still a couple people in there,” she whispers to Lian.

“Ugh, we've already been wandering around avoiding cops for like hours,” Lian groans, leaning back against a steel building.

“It's been forty minutes,” Milagro tells her. “We're just lucky their orbit is off from ours, so it's already closing time.” When she gets no reply, she turns around and finds that Lian has fallen asleep slumped against the wall. “Shit! Lian!”

She shakes Lian’s shoulders, taps her cheek. “Hrn?” Lian says, blinking sleepily at her.

Milagro sighs heavily. “God, I drank more than you,” she grumbles. “This lightweight thing is getting less and less cute.”

Lian blinks down at her with a frown. “Did I… Are you mad?” she asks with something of a pout.

Milagro snorts. “Am I mad?” she hisses with a bitter laugh. “No, you just drank much stronger liquor than you're used to - which is none, punched a guy who was trying to help you, started a bar fight instead of apologizing, probably got us banned from my favorite place, thus getting us stranded on an alien planet, and have me running from cops because - unlike Guy - I do _not_ like it when I get in trouble with my superiors.” She rolls her eyes. “Why the hell would I be mad?”

Lian is seething. “I wouldn't be here if you hadn't insisted!” she exclaims, making Milagro hiss to keep her voice down - they've already made that mistake once. Lian ignores her, continuing, “I just wanted some _alone_ time, to let this day pass _without_ acknowledgement, so that I can _mourn my father in peace_!”

“Mourn?” Milagro demands. Baffled, she steps forward, hands spread in a pleading peace gesture. “Lian, Red Arrow isn't _dead_.”

Lian huffs and looks away. Tears glisten on her cheeks under the street lights. “You don't have to patronize me,” she says quietly.

“I'm not!” Milagro insists. She steps closer into Lian's space but is still careful not to push too far. “Lian, you should know by now… You know what it's like being a hero. We have long learned the lesson that you never _ever_ give up on a man until you find the body. Sometimes, not even then.”

“He could be at the bottom of the sea for all we know,” she says, unable to keep her voice from cracking under the weight of her grief. “He could be ash.”

“He could not be,” Milagro insists. “And I promise you, if he is, we won't rest until we have found and gathered every single fleck of ash for you. Do you understand me?”

She's only given half a second to brace for impact before Lian seizes her in a hug that's mostly just falling on her. Lian presses her wet face into Milagro’s shoulder and sobs.

“HIGNAK DEN DURRA MELTN!” says the voice behind Milagro that, based on the order it gave, is probably a local cop.

“Crap,” Milagro hisses as Lian freezes in her arms. She quickly calculates their odds of escaping unharmed and then the odds that that route will still get them a portal back home. The odds are decent on the first one but dismal on the second.

“HIGNAK DEN DURRA MELTN!” the cop insists.

“Geez, okay, give me a second! We're having a moment!” Milagro says as she quickly fires off a beacon from her ring before shoving the ring into Lian's back pocket and then turning around with her hands raised. She smiles pleasantly at the three Pijdigites behind them. “Can I help you, officers?”

* * *

“ _Escape from Gotham_!” Jo guesses at Mari’s hilarious drawing of Batman with a grizzled beard and 80s hair.

“Got it!” Mari says, and Jo squeals in delight.

“There wasn't a Batman character in that movie,” Damian objects.

“No, that's just a clue, Damian,” Mari explains.

“That was an 80s movie, right?” says Colin. “Was Batman even a thing then? How old is he?”

Damian bristles. “Not that old.”

“Damian, your dad is my _grandpa_ ,” Mari reminds him. “He has white hair. He's old.”

Damian grumbles something back at her, but Colin's phone is buzzing in his back pocket. He excuses himself from the game and steps over to the doorway to answer it. “Hello?... Uh, she left over two hours ago with Red Wolf. Off-world recreation.… Pijdig-5. … Can I ask wh－?” He pulls the phone away from his ear with a frown.

“What was that?” Damian asks as Colin returns to his seat.

“Gardner was trying to confirm Milagro’s location,” he says. He's still frowning despite his voice trying to sound casual. “She took her ring off for some reason.”

“I knew she was gone too long,” says Damian as he hops over the back of the couch to rush out, but his friend predicted exactly this maneuver and easily hooks an arm across his chest mid-jump and throws him right back onto the couch cushions. As he is nearly twice Colin's mass, Colin probably wouldn't have been able to do that were it not for years of sparring practice and the fact that Damian wasn't expecting it. “Colin!” he objects.

“Time dilation effect,” barks Colin. “They have _not_ been gone long from their perspective, and even from our perspective, it's a pretty normal amount of time. Secondly, Gardner, as much of a pain in the ass as he may be, is _far_ more equipped to retrieve them from trouble on a planet we have almost no data on. He will let us know if we're needed.”

Damian is already on his feet again. “You're not the boss of this team, and we totally have enough data for operations!”

“Yeah?” says Colin with an amused look. “What's it say?”

Damian clucks at him in irritation but digs out his tablet to check. “It says… A few things.”

“Three things, actually,” Colin says, and he lists them off on his fingers, “‘Neelax System.’ ‘Lantern-aligned.’ And ‘Reyes drinks at the HEEBONG CHULL.’”

“I don't think that's how you pronounce that,” Damian sulks.

“Yes, it is.” Colin sighs. “Please have some faith in your teammates. It's your turn by the way.”

But when they both turn back to the whiteboard, they see that Mari is still standing there, wringing her hands, as a few tears drip down from watery eyes. “You… You're sure Lian will be okay?”

Damian shoots Colin a pointed look, and Colin forces a grin more confident than he's currently feeling. “Absolutely,” he says. “There's nowhere safer than at Milagro’s side.”

* * *

Milagro Reyes finds herself staring down the barrel of an alien gun as the owner of the gun calmly lists off the reasons he should shoot her. “I think,” she nervously admits to Lian, “I may have made a miscalculation.”

“What’s going on?” Lian hisses back, but one of the other Pijdigite cops swings its gun toward her in suspicion. She raises her hands higher just in case. The third cop monitors the situation from behind them, which makes Lian’s back want to break out in hives.

“Uh, well, apparently intentional violence against the public is a firing offense,” Milagro informs her. “Which, based on the video is what they － JEELAK NORP ZIND’WYY － think we did. I’m refuting as best I can.”

“‘Firing’ as in, uh…?”

“As in _firing squad_ , now hush,” Milagro snaps. To the officer, she objects, “IPNAT TURROCKSY IDAL NORAT. TENNSO VERASSO IRVANG, uuuh, TILOQUAT SHA RENOPASSTROL VILOC.”

All three guns move to her, distracted from Lian by whatever Milagro said. Lian is taken aback. “Reyes, what are you doing?” she demands.

“My _job_ ,” Milagro hisses.

“ICHOY NARREN?” demands the lead cop.

“ISK NARREN,” Milagro agrees. “DENDAK POLLAL.”

“INT POLLAL. ICHOY NARREN, INT HEEDAK FARRUSK.”

“INT CHA’LA’AL,” Milagro counters. “ISK NARREN INT CHA’LA’AL, DENDAK POLLAL.”

“What are you－?” Lian tries to ask, but Milagro shushes her again, making a ‘be quiet’ gesture with one of her formerly raised hands.

Which causes the cop in front of Lian to fire. Milagro barely ducks in time to get her shoulder singed instead of her face. _Fuck talking this out,_ Lian decides, and she drops to the ground, sweeping her bum leg out to take down the trigger-happy cop so at least only one leg would be occasionally shooting pain at her. Their hold on their weapon loosens as they fall, and Lian tucks and rolls over their fallen form just in time to avoid shots from the other cops. She pulls a knife loose from her boot, grabs at the energy rifle, shoves the butt into the downed cop’s face hard enough to hopefully knock it out, cuts the strap loose, rolls to avoid fire again, comes up on her good knee and gives the next nearest cop a new bad knee. They go down. She stands and aims for the third cop…

Who has their own gun three inches from Milagro’s head.

They stand off. The other two will have recovered in only moments. Time to act is dwindling fast, sand through her fingers. She won’t, she can’t lose someone else. Standing right in front of her. Eyes pleading. “Lian…”

A green flash streaks across the sky and lands with a boom behind Lian. She doesn’t turn to see which Lantern it is, but she’s already shaking with relief. Milagro tilts her head at a 2 o’clock angle and flashes four fingers, obviously trying to signal something to her comrade.

“Good job, guys!” Guy Gardner exclaims from behind Lian. She immediately rolls her eyes skyward and rescinds all former thankfulness. “You have captured intergalactic felons Rilagro Meyes and Wed Rolf!” There’s a distorted version of his own voice talking over him as he obviously uses his ring for translation.

The Pijdigite cops give each other what Lian suspects to be skeptical looks. “HEENDARK VELLO’IN PART?” asks the one with the blown knee with a seriously impressive amount of calm as they use their energy rifle as a crutch to prop themself up. The ring translates, “Do you have proof of your claim to them?”

“Yeah, sure, buddy,” Guy says with a laugh in his voice that is definitely mocking them for not realizing he can generate literally any physical object he can imagine and many varieties of non-physical ones. He holds out his ringed hand and a green panel of hard light generates some sort of document with mugshots of Milagro and Lian. Lian notices that the mugshot also has her in her bra.

The aliens are disgruntled but agree to hand off Milagro and Lian to him. He cuffs the two of them (in front instead of behind, just in case), signs some document, and then leads the two of them out of view before pulling some kind of compact portal generator out of his vest pocket. “This will get us a few moons over, and we can boom you and your jailbait home from there,” he tells Milagro. And then he nods toward Lian with a grin and a wink. “Nice job there, by the way. Your bed buddy know?”

Instead of answering, Milagro blushes deeply and raises both handcuffed fists to flip him off, which only makes her mentor cackle in delight.


	6. Chapter 6

By the time the boom tube activates, the team is already waiting in the garage. Mari is as close to the portal as she's allowed to be, wringing her hands as Jo leans supportively against her. Damian is several feet back, tapping his foot in irritation. Colin, between them, tries to focus on how amused he is by Damian's behavior and to ignore the way his own stomach squirms.

But, finally, the tube activates, and Gardner hauls a handcuffed Milagro and Lian through, snickering to himself. Milagro has crusted blood under her nose and a bruise blossoming just below her eye, and Lian has a split lip, bleeding scalp, severely scratched and bruised body, rag-bandaged hands, and is missing her shirt. She immediately dodges out of the way when Mari attempts to tackle her into a hug. “No, no, Mary, there's glass on my jeans!” she cries in objection.

“Get these fucking things off,” Milagro growls at Guy, holding up her handcuffed wrists.

“I mean if you want to keep them for－”

“Finish that sentence, and I will murder you.”

Snickering happily, Guy releases her first before turning to Lian. At the same time, Milagro promptly reaches over to pull her ring out of Lian's back pocket and then shoves it onto her right hand with obvious relief. Damian demands, “What the _hell_ happened to you?”

“Never before drank a moment in her life, and she _starts a bar fight_ ,” Milagro growls angrily. She rubs at her wrists despite the fact that the handcuffs hadn't been clamped tightly or for very long. Colin quickly pulls her into a hug.

“The whole drinking thing was your idea in the first place!” Lian bites back.

“Milagro and Lian are the most reliable people we have,” Damian repeats in a poor imitation of Colin's East Gotham accent. His best friend shoots him a glare.

Guy snorts. “Well, of course Knucklehead here thinks so. He's fuckin’ the one of them.”

Colin stiffens and turns beet red. Jo's eyes widen in horror. Milagro rolls her eyes to the ceiling and groans dramatically. Lian and Mari start covering their mouths and giggling.

And Damian, surprising the subjects of the statement, just rolls his eyes. “Tt,” he says. “You're an idiot.”

Guy blinks, confused for a moment. And then, slowly, a wicked grin spreads across his face. He opens his mouth, and Milagro immediately cuts him off with, “Welp, it's been nice seeing you again, dude! You should head home now, though. Or wherever. I'm going to bed. I'm fucking exhausted. _Shut up, Guy_.”

“Oh,” says Colin. “Uh, yeah, I'll…”

“Get Red Wolf to medical and clean her up,” Milagro finishes for him. “She _sat_ in broken glass. It's been embedded in her jeans fabric for like an hour.”

“Yeah, it's been itching like crazy,” Lian says, and Mari has to grab her hand to keep her from pulling at her jeans in discomfort.

“Actually, Gardner should probably stay to debrief,” says Damian.

Milagro would rather die. “He was barely even there!” she objects. “Red and I will－ _What the fuck?_ ”

They follow her attention to find Lian already working on her belt to get out of her itchy pants, to her comrades’ horror and Guy's amusement. Colin morphs probably much faster than he should and seizes her up over his shoulder. “Okay, drunko!” he decides. “Let's get you to medical!”

“And _then_ I can get rid of these pants?” Lian demands. They're out the door before they hear Colin's reply.

Guy gives Milagro a faux-sympathetic look. “Must chafe to see your man getting in another girl’s pants,” he taunts. “I'll beat him up for you if you need it.”

Milagro presses the boom tube controls to quickly reopen it to the most recent location, and then shoves her mentor backward through it.

* * *

> (devil): from your ASS?  
>  (wolf): well i cant do it, rob wont do it, green was mad and sleepy, sg wouldve exploded of embarrassment, and my sister should not be trusted with medical equipment  
>  (devil): but from your ASS tho  
>  (wolf): yep!  
>  (wolf): there wasnt much really. the denim protected me from any bad injuries its just the really small pieces got imbedded and scratched at me when i moved nothing a little balm cant fix  
>  (wolf): my back is pretty deeply scratched tho and my hands got fucked  
>  (devil): christ you're a disaster  
>  (devil): well if you need any help with that healing balm… ;)  
>  (wolf): suddenly my own butt is much more difficult to reach! i think i may require the expertise of someone well-practiced in touching my butt  
>  (devil): lmfao  
>  (devil): any time, babe  
>  (wolf): bbl The Adults are back  
>  (devil): you are also an adult don't make this weirder than it already is

Lian puts her phone on her bedside table as Milagro, looking even more haggard after her few hours of sleep, slumps into Lian's recovery room and collapses into a chair. Damian follows her in, closes the door behind him, and leans against the wall as he taps distractedly at his tablet. Finally, he says, “Robin-5 recording debriefing of Red Wolf-1 and Green Lantern-MR regarding non-mission off-world incident previous night resulting in their mild injury and barring of all future travel to the region.” He looks between the two. “Who wants to start?”

Lian’s bandaged fists tighten in the oversized nightshirt Mari lent her. She feels tense and cornered. Yes, she's more responsible for her actions than she was willing to admit last night, but just because Milagro ranks higher doesn't mean she should be able to pin everything －

“It started around dinner time yesterday when I found Red Wolf and Nightstar arguing about cake,” Milagro tells him, quiet and serious. She's looking at Damian, not Lian, and Lian's wariness increases. “Red Wolf wasn't feeling celebratory, Nightstar was pushing it, things got heated. I separated them, talked to Nightstar about what happened, then went to talk to Red Wolf in the gym. I suggested going out for drinks instead, and I took her to HEEBONG CHULL.”

“Why?” asks Damian.

Milagro sighs and slouches in her chair so that her head drops against the backrest. “Selfishness, probably?” she tells him, and Lian is so startled by that that it shakes her out of her tension. Milagro continues without noticing, “I don't handle stress well, as you know, so I automatically offered what I would want to do in her place instead of considering her differences, such as being raised straightedge.”

“And then what happened?” Damian presses.

“I started her off with something light, having learned my lessons from you and Sin, but I was drinking fruit liqueur, and I didn't stop her from stealing my drink,” Milagro confesses. “Things went awry when she stumbled on her way to the bathroom, was caught by a stranger, and she misinterpreted the gesture and hit them. Soon, a brawl started, which is how she ended up with her glass injuries, and I knew the only way to de-escalate was to get her out of there, so we ran. I didn't want it known that a Green Lantern had caused this, so I ran from the local authorities instead of trying to appeal to them. For this reason, we also didn't have a way to get back to base. My plan was to stay out of sight for a while then circle back to the bar, break in, and use their boom back.

“As the night wore on, I began to become increasingly aggressive toward Red Wolf. I was blaming her for events to avoid the fact that I had fucked up so badly. I did, however, attempt to treat the wounds to her hands, which is why she lost her shirt － It was sacrificed for the sake of bandages.”

Damian looks at her with a skeptical frown. “Didn't you have a jacket you could have leant her to cover up with?” he asks.

“Hey, yeah!” Lian blurts, only realizing the fact now that it has been pointed out. She immediately shuts up again at Damian’s sharp look, but Milagro laughs.

“Dude, that's my favorite jacket!” she protests. “No matter how guilty I feel, I'm not letting her get blood all over it. Do you know how hard it is to clean dyed leather?”

Lian blinks at this revelation, seeing Milagro anew. Milagro felt guilty? Suddenly, a lot of things made sense, from Milagro’s initial refusal to take responsibility to her now jumping to take all of it.

Damian sighs. “Alright, and then what happened?” he asks.

“Well, we kept arguing and getting loud, which kept getting us caught,” says Milagro. “When we circled back to the bar, things kind of escalated, and we caught the attention for three local law enforcement officers. What I had been previously unaware of was that apparently Pijdig-5 had been having problems with wealthy off-worlders slumming it there ostensibly for a nice vacation only to purposefully cause chaos and violence against locals for their own entertainment. The reaction to this was apparently draconian laws for off-worlders. So purposefully starting a bar fight was punishable with death. I should also note that just before interacting with the officers, I sent a beacon to Guy Gardner and then placed my ring in Red Wolf’s back pocket, thinking at the time that it was better they think I _wasn't_ a Green Lantern.

“The lead officer explained our charges and gave us the option to dispute the charges before being shot in the head. I immediately took full responsibility for the incident but also attempted to plea extraneous causes in an attempt to gain myself a hearing instead of being killed then and there.”

“Wait, you said _what_?!” Lian demands.

But Milagro ignores her and continues, “As Red Wolf did not understand the language I was speaking, she kept interrupting to demand clarification. And as these very jumpy police officers did not understand English, I kept trying to tell her to be quiet. When I motioned to her, the secondary officer fired on me, and I evaded. Red Wolf then took him down, recovered his weapon and fired on the primary officer, which left her in a standoff with the tertiary officer with me between them. Luckily, this is when Gardner finally responded to my beacon. He claimed that we were criminals wanted by the Lantern Corp, ‘arrested us,’ and then took us back to Titans Edge for release.”

“What? No, back the hell up!” Lian insists, and finally Damian and Milagro are actually paying attention to her. “What the _hell_ was that story?”

“Do you refute her version of events?” asks Damian.

Lian looks between the two, confused. “Well… No, not exactly, but－”

“Then you'll have your turn to add details,” he says. He clicks something on his tablet then hands it over to Milagro. “Thumbprint signature.”

“She attempted to _sacrifice herself for me!_ ” Lian screeches, sitting up in bed for maximum emphasis. “That's not okay!”

“What do you mean that's not okay?” demands Milagro. “That's literally my job.”

“What?!” demands Lian. “No, it isn't. One teammate isn't more valuable than－!”

“I am not your teammate,” Milagro says so bluntly that it's like she'd thrown cold water on Lian. Lian is left gaping, shocked and confused. Milagro stands and faces Lian fully. “I'm sorry my attempts to foster a sense of camaraderie seem to have mislead you about that fact. But I am your supervisor, not your teammate. For that matter, neither are Robin nor Abuse. We are your superiors in staff and seniors in experience. It will always be our primary concern to get you home safe. You and Jo and Mari look out for each other. But Robin, Abuse, and I look out for _you_.”

Lian is shaking with rage. “Don't you _ever_ throw yourself away for me!” she shouts, voice cracking.

Milagro sighs. She takes Damian's tablet, presses her thumb to it, and hands it back. “I'm sorry you don't like it,” Milagro tells her. “But, yes, I will do just that if needed. I don't care if it upsets you; I care that you live.”

“ _GET OUT!_ ” Lian screams.

Milagro doesn't argue. She just leaves. Damian sighs and looks away but doesn't move. He still needs to record Lian's side of the story.

She tries to speak again. To scream at him for taking Milagro’s side. To tell him that she's an adult who can take care of herself. To try to finish her debriefing so she can finally get him out, too.

Instead, she just sobs. And suddenly, she's overwhelmed by them. Chest wracking sobs so thick she can hardly breathe, and the only thing she can do is bury her face in her pillow and let everything out. Her grief. Her pain. Her anger. Her anxiety. Her loneliness. Her betrayal. And the really fucking stupid thing is that most of it isn't even about Milagro.

* * *

Milagro turns from the luggage on her bed at the sound of a knock on her door. “Come in,” she says.

She's relieved when it's Colin who enters. “Hey,” he says with a small smile, closing the door behind him.

“Hey,” she says, smiling back.

Colin takes in the scene before him, hands in his pockets. “You, uh, going somewhere?” he asks.

“What?” Milagro glances back to the bed and laughs. “Oh, no, I'm unpacking. From when I moved here. Two years ago.”

“Ah,” says Colin. He rubs at the back of his neck. “Yeah, when I debriefed Guy, he mentioned you've been feeling stressed.”

Milagro raises an eyebrow. “Did he?”

“Well, what he said was a lot more colorful, but that's what I got out of it,” Colin tells her, and she laughs.

“Yeah, sounds about right.” She turns back to folding her clothes and piling them in small stacks to put in her dresser.

“So… Have you thought about maybe taking a breather?” he asks. “Might be what you need to feel a little less on edge.”

Milagro snorts. She doesn't even remember what it feels like not to be so far on edge that the edge is giving her an atomic wedgie. “And how do you propose I manage that with _three_ unpaid jobs?” she says maybe a little too harshly.

Despite her tone, Colin still comes up behind her, gently pulls her close against him, and kisses her hair. “Well, we can start with me promising two weeks overtime at the shelter in exchange for my boss giving me a discount on her rental cabin,” he tells her, and he raises his hand in front of her to jangle an unfamiliar key.

“What?” Milagro gasps. “Colin, we can't－”

“Step two is me giving a week's paycheck to Oracle in exchange for her blocking incoming calls to our phones for the next fifty hours for anything less than the apocalypse,” Colin continues.

She turns to him, eyes wide. “Seriously?”

“Well, I still haven't finished step three yet,” he admits.

Milagro rolls her eyes. “And what is that?” she asks.

“You and I run out of here right now before Damian realizes he can't call us.”

Milagro grabs him by the collar and pulls her boyfriend into a hard, breathless kiss. “I love you so much,” she whispers against his lips.

He's grinning. “I love you, too. More than anything.” He had to force himself to pull away, though, and tell her, “But seriously, throw some shit in a bag and hurry. We have to leave like right now.”

* * *

“You didn't have to walk me all the way back to my room,” Lian grumbles again as she and Damian finally come to a stop outside her door.

“That's not what I'm doing,” he says brusquely. He leans past her to knock on the door.

After a second, Mari opens the door, looking confused. “Um, hi?” she says. Her eyes quickly dart to her sister. “Are you okay?”

Lian quickly chokes off the laugh that bursts out of her in response to that, fully aware that it makes her sound like a crazy person. Instead, she clears her throat and then replies, “I will be.”

Mari looks skeptical, but isn't given the chance to argue as Damian promptly orders, “Follow me.”

Confused, the two girls obey. They follow him to the stairs and then up to the research lab. There, he sits at a computer and starts bringing up files. The first three are spreadsheets. He turns to Lian, “Those are Jade Nguyen’s bank accounts.”

Lian raises an eyebrow. “Okay?”

“There has not been a deposit in the past two months,” he says, pointing again.

“So?”

He sighs heavily. “ _So_ , she was not a paid member of the crew on that boat. She was there for some other reason.”

“What reason?” presses Mari, suddenly interested.

“Well, she's been known to steal from criminals before,” Lian says. “Especially drugs. It's kind of hard to report or claim your stolen product when it's illegal in the first place. And paying nothing for it means she still makes a lot of profit selling it cheap.”

“Yeah, that was my thought, too,” says Damian. “But then yesterday morning I made an interesting discovery. I wasn't sure if I should share it yet as it's still not _clear_ what it means, but, given what you just told me, it seems necessary to loop you in.”

Lian cocks an eyebrow at him. “Why? What's she done now?” she asks.

He shakes his head. Brings up another few files. Chemical analysis. “As I already told you girls, the chemicals we found at the body warehouse were a partial match to a Lazarus cocktail I found in Tibet. But just two nights ago, the database made a new, complete match.” He turns to face the girls again. “It's a 100% match for a sample Green Arrow pulled from the Ivory Coast site Red Hood and Red Arrow disappeared from.”

Mari blinks, eyes wide. She looks at Damian, at the computer, at Damian again, at her sister… “What… What does that mean?”

Lian's hand is cupped over her mouth as she reads the data for herself. “Cheshire knows something we don't know,” she realizes. “She thinks he's alive. She's chasing a whole other lead, _and she thinks he's alive!_ ” She turns to her sister, eyes wide, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Oh my god, Mary, they might be alive!”

Mari punches her sister in the arm hard enough to cause her to yelp and to immediately start bruising. “I TOLD YOU SO!”


End file.
